Wrongly convicted man freed

Steven Avery tastes his first freedom in more than 17 years

By TOM KERTSCHER
tkertscher@journalsentinel.com
Last Updated: Sept. 11, 2003

Stanley - Under a bright sun just before 9 Thursday morning, Steven Avery took his final steps toward freedom with his sister on one arm and his daughter on the other, his parents and his history-making legal team trailing behind.

Steven A. Avery was released from prison Thursday morning, 18 years after being wrongly convicted.

There was a pause as the group approached the final set of locked doors at the prison. More than 17 years behind bars for a wrongly convicted man were about to end.

"I'm out!" the soft-spoken Avery cried. "Feels wonderful."

Moments later, the 41-year-old former auto salvage worker became the first Wisconsin inmate to get his conviction overturned by the Wisconsin Innocence Project and only the third state inmate to be freed from prison through DNA testing.

A day after the testing proved that another man had beaten and sexually assaulted a Manitowoc woman in 1985, Avery expressed no anger toward the victim, who had repeatedly identified him as her attacker.

"It ain't her fault," he stated simply, directing blame instead at the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department for making him a suspect. "They put it mostly in her head."

The Sheriff's Department, in Avery's estimation, didn't want to pursue other leads once it had helped steer the victim toward identifying him.

"They wanted somebody real bad," he said. "And I was the one."

16 alibi witnesses
Based on the victim's testimony - and despite 16 alibi witnesses who testified on Avery's behalf - a jury convicted Avery of the attack. He was sentenced in 1986 to 32 years in prison. It was only because of recent advancements in DNA testing technology, and the preservation of 13 hairs collected from the crime scene, that he was exonerated.

"Do not take Mr. Avery's release today as an indication that the system does work," said one of Avery's lawyers, University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Keith Findley. "It does not work."

One of the 13 hairs contained enough of a root to match its DNA to that of Gregory A. Allen, an inmate in Green Bay who is serving a 60-year sentence for a sexual assault committed after the Manitowoc woman was attacked, according to court records. Once those results were confirmed late Wednesday, Manitowoc County Circuit Judge Fred Hazlewood, who had sentenced Avery, immediately ordered him freed.

Findley called for an independent probe of the investigation of the Manitowoc woman's assault and for a commission to study wrongful convictions. Mistakes that are made must be identified so that they are not repeated, he said.

Findley and UW law professor John Pray, who co-direct the 5-year-old Wisconsin Innocence Project, questioned whether the Sheriff's Department adequately investigated suspects other than Avery.

Department defended
But while expressing sympathy for Avery, Tom Kocourek, who was sheriff in Manitowoc County when Avery was arrested, defended his department's investigation of the case. And both he and current Sheriff Kenneth Peterson said they saw no purpose in an independent probe of the investigation, given that relevant records are already available.

Kocourek, who retired in January 2001, said his department thoroughly investigated other leads in the case.

"At the time that the evidence was presented to the district attorney, he felt there was enough to present it to the court, and the court felt there was enough to bind (Avery) over for trial, and the jury felt there was enough to convict him," Kocourek said. "I don't know what else we could have done at the time."

The case against Avery, who had two burglary convictions at the time of his arrest, was based on the testimony of the victim. The then-36-year-old business owner had been attacked while jogging near Lake Michigan, north of Two Rivers, about 3:50 p.m. on July 29, 1985.

Based on the victim's description of her attacker - and the opinion of at least one Sheriff's Department employee who thought Avery matched the description - Avery was awakened from bed and arrested that night. The victim later identified Avery as her attacker in a photo lineup and in a live lineup of suspects - but only Avery was included in both lineups, Findley said.

Janine Geske, the former state Supreme Court justice who is representing the victim, said Allen had been arrested two years earlier on the same beach for a sex-related crime. But the Sheriff's Department did not identify him to the victim as a possible suspect, Geske said.

Two jurors who found Avery guilty had mixed feelings Thursday about his release.

Shirley Wegforth said, "I don't know if (releasing him) was the right thing to do. I don't remember a lot. It was so long ago. But no, I don't have a guilty feeling about putting him away."

Another juror, Violet Hansen, said: "We found him guilty off of everything that we heard. It took us about two hours, and I think we all agreed at that time. I thought from the beginning that he was guilty. I feel kind of sad (that the DNA evidence found he was innocent)."

Trying not to dwell on the case, Avery was cheered Thursday by the presence of one of his five children, 19-year-old Jennifer. But he shed tears over how his conviction led quickly to the end of his marriage and the estrangement of his twin sons, now 18, who were born six days before his arrest.

"There ain't no way I can make it up," Avery said of the time he lost with his family.

But after spending some time with his parents, Avery said he plans to settle in Crivitz, near where most of his children live. He urged other wrongly convicted prisoners to remain faithful.

"There's always miracles going around," he said. "Hopefully they can get out just like me and get the guilty one in."

Rachel McCormick of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this article.






From the Sept. 12, 2003 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel